


simply going forward

by armyofbees



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, M/M, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:09:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23719486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armyofbees/pseuds/armyofbees
Summary: “Where am I going?” Nix asks, and it sounds cryptic, even to him. He doesn’t mean anything by it. He really doesn’t know where the turn off is.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	simply going forward

**Author's Note:**

> title from the lovely [Oh Please, Let It Be Lightning](http://fieldofficeagency.com/office/oh-please) by Ada Limon.
> 
> an excerpt from my texts to betwixt, upon finishing this: "driving as a metaphor for sex or something; everything is about sex, except sex, which is about cars."
> 
> as always, work of fiction, no disrespect intended, etc. enjoy!

Dick is watching Nix out of the corner of his eye. He’s doing what he always does when he’s nervous about Nix’s driving and doesn’t want him to know it — his hand is creeping towards the window crank for something to hold onto. Nix’s eyes catch on his fingernails rather than the headlights flying by out front.

“You need something?” Nix asks, going for bold.

“Just you.” Of course Dick beats him to it.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Mm, no, not him,” Dick hums, his fingers steady on the crank. Wrapped around it with care, striped in black-and-white by fleeting shadows.

“Jesus Christ,” Nix says again, like the man himself’s about to drop down from the sky and shame them into submission. He feels suddenly like he should be slowing down. Stopping. Getting out and walking away and avoiding Dick’s eyes.

Outside, headlights. Inside, Nix catches Dick’s gaze and doesn’t let go. Dick has this look on his face that’s only sort of a challenge, like he’s pinning Nix there, to him, on purpose, but he’d really rather that Nix was watching the road instead. He doesn’t blink.

Dick gets like this, wound up and surly. It’s strange to see such a blatant reflection of himself, Nix thinks, eyes catching on the blacked-out sheen of the window. Dick’s hand still rests on the lever. The problem is that Nix doesn’t even know what to do with himself when he catches a mood, relies on Dick to break him out of it. The problem is that sometimes Nix is sure he doesn’t know Dick half as well as he thinks he does.

“Where am I going?” Nix asks, and it sounds cryptic, even to him. He doesn’t mean anything by it. He really doesn’t know where the turn off is.

Dick doesn’t reply for a moment, still holding Nix’s gaze. Nix thinks distantly that it won’t much matter whether or not there’s a turn off when he runs the car off the road. Or drifts over the median. He ought to look out the windshield. Dick blinks. There are headlights coming up over the hill in the distance.

“There are still a few miles,” says Dick, quietly. It’s not the same sure tone it had been earlier. The purr. Nix thinks about missing things he didn’t think he wanted.

“Yeah,” says Nix. He hasn’t had that much to drink tonight but it sounds like he has. He’s talking like he has. He feels guilty for something he hasn’t done. He wants something he doesn’t want. Tonight is about contradictions, he thinks, catching Dick’s conflicted face in his periphery again. It’s all he can do not to turn his head and meet him face-to-face.

“We can turn around,” Dick says, and Nix does turn to look at him then. He doesn’t look angry. His tone was a little harsh. He looks like he’s ashamed, or embarrassed. Nix doesn’t think he’s asked for anything to be ashamed of.

“I don’t want to,” says Nix, but Dick still seems down in the mouth.

“We can if you need,” says Dick. Nix feels strangely like he’s dreaming. Everything is washed out as another car passes by, as they streak by another lamppost. He realizes he hasn’t slowed down, and Dick’s fingers are still curled meticulously around the window crank.

“If I need,” says Nix, without thinking. He’s half offended. What the fuck does Dick think he’s doing here? You don’t get in a car and drive yourself somewhere you don’t want to be, even if you’re drunk. Which Nix isn’t, he reminds himself.

“What _do_ you want?” asks Dick. There’s something to be said for the question. Nix has spent most of this ride mapping out the things he doesn’t want and does, all at once. He should probably have thought about the end goal.

“To not miss my exit,” says Nix, which is true. It’s got to be coming up soon. They’re flying and it’s dark; Dick hasn’t been out here in a long time. Nix hasn’t been out here ever. He wishes his life would stop working out like that.

“You won’t,” says Dick. _It’s coming up soon,_ goes unsaid, but Nix hears it. Thinks he hears it. Dick doesn’t say anything else, leaning into the arm with the hand on the window crank. Nix wants to tell him to just roll the damn thing down already, but they’re going too fast for it.

Nonsensically, Nix says, “What if I do?”

“It’s not going to happen,” says Dick. He almost sounds tired. Christ, but Nix hasn’t seen him for months. Dick hasn’t slept on a real bed for weeks, at least. And here Nix is, goading him into clutching the window lever for dear life while he asks questions with no answer. He really hasn’t had that much to drink.

“But what if,” insists Nix, who’s never had a whit of sense in his life. He feels Dick’s gaze yawning long and dark on the side of his face. He looks back out at the road for once. “What will you do with me then?”

Dick, out of the corner of his eye, sinks back into the junction of the seat and the door. His fingers twitch, his left hand resting uselessly on his thigh. “Nothing, Lew,” he says, and he does sound tired then. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not going to miss it. Promise.”

Nix narrows his eyes out at the now-empty highway. He should slow down. Watch out for deer. They’re in the middle of nowhere, for Christ’s sake. And besides, he’s feeling surly now, too. If he wanted a promise, he would’ve been asking different questions. “Okay,” he says, amenably. There’s a disconnect somewhere in him, probably.

They’re quiet, which is new. Nix had imagined for a while that once he got Dick back they’d never run out of things to talk about. That was never going to happen, of course. Even at their thickest, probably somewhere in France, they had silent stretches. Dick doesn’t talk that much anyway, and sometimes the truth about the military is that once you’ve said what you came there to say, there’s nothing else to do except leave or sit around waiting for more orders. Anyway, Dick liked to pretend he didn’t gossip, and not even Nix got to break through that facade.

The road whips by outside, and Nix feels more and more settled with each passed turn off. Dick would have told him if he’d missed it by now, probably. His hands are loose around the steering wheel.

Suddenly, the waffling bluster of the wind fills the car, and Nix turns to stare at where Dick has opened the window, just a crack. It’s unbearably loud. Nix flinches.

“Open or shut, Jesus Christ,” says Nix, who should probably stop saying that.

Dick looks him straight in the eye. “Open or shut?” he asks, distorted by the wind. Nix feels his stomach drop out from under him, though he doesn’t know why. He feels like he’s floating, his hands drifting away from the steering wheel.

He thinks, _Thank Christ we’re alone out here._

“Lew,” says Dick, prodding. “Lew, open or shut?”

It’s not warm in the car. Nix should want the window closed, probably, the quiet reintroduced. Cultivate it. The peace, the lack of questions. Just him and Dick in the car, driving through the shitty countryside of Pennsylvania too late at night to see anyone else anymore. Unobtrusive, somehow friendly. That kind of quiet.

He looks at Dick in the passenger seat, fingers loose around the window crank, somehow poised. Any number of ways this could go. It’s a balance, he thinks stupidly. He’s not as muddled as he should be to be thinking like that. Dick looks back, and there’s that quirk again. Don’t-look-at-me quirk. Look at the road. But there’s no one else around, and Nix is distracted by the noise from the window.

“Open.”

**Author's Note:**

> pop by my [tumblr](https://townhulls.tumblr.com/) if you're so inclined!


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